Students, faculty react to recent firings of the White House

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In recent months, the American people have been inundated with news of White House staff leaving their position. With recent news of the national security advisor H.R McMaster parting ways with the White House, faculty and students have begun to question why so many have left the Trump Administration.

Since the beginning of March, five major staff members have parted ways with the White House. On March 6, Gary Cohn, an economic advisor of Trump resigned over disagreements about steel tarrifs. Following that, John McEntee, Trump’s personal assistant was escorted out of the White House on March 12 for unspecified reasons. On March 13, Rex Tillerson, secretary of state, was replaced by a new staff member. Three days later, Andrew McCabe, FBI deputy director, was ousted from his position hours before his formal retirement. The newest exit from the White House comes from H.R McMaster, the national security advisor, left and was replaced by John Bolton, a former UN Ambassador.

Dr. Thomas Baldino, a political science professor at Wilkes, has been following the departures since the beginning.

“Donald Trump is currently leading in terms of departures from the administration,” said Baldino.

“Typically, presidents come into office and they staff their administration with people who they know personally, people who they know somewhat, and people who they don’t know but finds them highly reccommended,” continued Baldino. “There is an expectation that people who accept the position will stay for a period of time.”

“Some of the positions like Chief of Staff are intense, and it’s typical for their to be a lot of turn-over for the position. Typically they stay for a year or two then move on,” explained Baldino. For comparison, Donald Trump has had two Chief of Staffs in the last year and a half.

Staff of the White House are expected to agree with the Preisdent in terms of policy.

“Trump did not start that way,” said Baldino. “He brought people in who he maybe didn’t know well enough, who didn’t have much in the expertise of the given area that they were assigned, and, perhaps he was unaware of or perhaps he was but he thought he could reconcile, he brought people in who didn’t agree with him.”

Kelly continued on why she thought there was such a large turnover of staff members compared to past administrations.

“I think the system is a little bit flawed,” she said, “but I think it is Trump’s leadership. If the system was really that flawed there would have been a lot of problems with past presidents, and there’s never been this much conflict.”